Meltdown
by BlueNeutrino
Summary: Crossover with the Amnesia mod "White Night". Sam's in the psych ward, plagued by visions of Lucifer forcing him to hallucinate the world turning upside down, arms reaching for him out of the walls, eyes in the ceiling and monstrous creatures hunting him through the abandoned halls of the hospital. But Sam can handle it. After all, he knows it's all in his head…right?
1. Wake Up Mr Insane

_**Meltdown**_

**A/N: This is inspired by the custom story "Amnesia: White Night" which despite being made using "The Dark Descent", is actually a very different game and a very well made mod (once you get past the bad voice acting). You have to play as a patient in a mental hospital who can't remember why he's there, and finds himself on his own while lots of freaky things go on around him. So I figured it was about time I wrote Sam a story, and this is a good opportunity for that which will also give me chance to have fun with Lucifer :) Set during season seven while Sam's going crazy in hospital and Cas isn't back yet. I'm not planning on making this too long, or even giving it a clear ending considering I still don't know what the actual game ending was supposed to be, but I just wanted to try out writing some creepy stuff.**

**Disclaimer: I don't own **_**Supernatural**_**, **_**Amnesia: The Dark Descent**_** or any of the game derivations thereof.**

_**Chapter One – Wake Up Mr. Insane**_

"Rise and shine, Sammy!"

The roaring voice cut into his hazy consciousness like a baseball hitting a pillow, sending feathers flying everywhere like his thoughts that were scattered into disarray. Sam groaned and opened his eyes blearily, struggling to wake and wishing he could sink back into the blissful blankness of sleep that he felt like he'd been missing for eternity. How was it he even managed to sleep in the first place? That wasn't something he'd found easy for a long time, and actual _peaceful _sleep was as good as impossible…

He didn't have time to collect his thoughts before they were invaded once again. "Come on, Sam, you're no fun when you're asleep. Now, get up! You won't believe what you've missed."

Groggily, Sam sat himself up against the metal frame of the hospital bed and shot a glare at the ever-present hallucination by his side, but didn't actually retaliate. That was only what it wanted.

Lucifer rolled his eyes and huffed childishly. "Really, Sam, you wanna take a look round. There was all sorts going on while you were off in snooze-land. Best get a good look at your surroundings and remember where all the important stuff is now, because you'll need that when it gets dark."

Sam didn't have a clue what he was talking about, and, as usual, tried to ignore him. He was too exhausted to play along with this, and the more attention he afforded the illusion, the more he felt his mind breaking down. It would only get better if he succeeded in tuning Lucifer out, like he used to be able to, but that was growing harder by the day.

His silence, of course, didn't shut the hallucination up. "Sammy, listen to me. I'm trying to help you out here. Get up and look round. There's important stuff you're missing."

Finding him increasingly difficult to ignore, Sam finally snapped back. "Look, I'm not listening to you because you're not real, okay? Nothing you say is real. Now just shut up because there's gonna be doctors here soon with medication and then I'm going back to sleep."

Lucifer just laughed at him, clearly not at all deterred by Sam's hostility. "That stuff never works, Sam. You know it doesn't. And it doesn't matter anyway because no doctors are going to be coming with medication."

Sam was still refusing to look at him, knowing that he was only trying to screw with his head even more than it had already been fucked over, but Lucifer leaned closer to whisper in his ear with a sneer. "You want to know why that is, Sam? Because _nobody's here._"

That didn't get a reaction, and looking annoyed, Lucifer wandered over to stand by the door. "You don't believe me, Sam? Fine. Then why don't you get up and check for yourself? You're the only one left."

Still nothing.

"Or are you just going to be a stubborn brat and stay in bed all day?"

That got a vague eye-flicker.

Lucifer gave a triumphant grin and punched the air, taking that as a sign of success. "Knew you were listening, Sammy. Now I mean it. You have to get up and find a way out of here, before they get to you too."

Sam's bloodshot eyes narrowed at him. He was used to Lucifer's constant torments, but the hallucination had never tried anything like this before. Its commands now seemed oddly specific, and Sam was confused as to why the angel seemed to want him to get up so urgently. Normally there was just lots of random shouting and hallucinations that ensured he never got a moment of peace, but today the angel seemed to be trying a different tack. Unless Sam's brain chemistry had drastically altered, he wasn't sure why something that only existed in his head would start behaving like this. Then again, he hadn't yet worked out how he'd managed to get to sleep in the first place, or even really remember what had been going on last night before he'd gone to bed.

His curiosity piqued enough to at least have a quick look out into the corridor, Sam swung his legs off the bed and got up stiffly, resolutely not looking in Lucifer's direction as he walked towards the door. The angel was probably leering at him, but Sam heard nothing more from him as he opened the door and peered out. He didn't see anyone in the corridor, but that didn't mean he was the only one left on the ward by any means.

Part of him was still tempted to just go and climb back into bed, tired as he was, but he knew that with Lucifer pestering him, there'd be no chance of getting any actual rest now. Deciding it couldn't hurt just to have a quick look around for someone else and confirm it for sure, Sam took a hesitant step outside into the corridor, but then Lucifer piped up again from behind him. "See? What did I tell you?"

"Shut up," Sam growled, taking a few paces down the corridor and not looking back. He came to the next door along, recalling that it belonged to a schizophrenic girl he'd managed to have a coherent conversation with a couple of times. He tried the door, unsure as to whether it would be locked or not, but finding that it wasn't he pushed it open slowly, trying not to disturb her if she was inside. However, as Sam got the door fully open without hearing a thing from within the room, he was surprised to see there was nobody there. Even odder, the mattress has been lifted from the bed and now lay on the floor several feet away with the sheets flung messily over it. Sam frowned, a little confused, and Lucifer chuckled.

"Believe me yet, Sam?"

Sam was beginning to think that maybe he did - or at least he believed that _something _was wrong - but he still didn't want Lucifer to have the satisfaction of seeing how unsettled he was. He stormed past the hallucination and back out into the corridor, trying the next room along. That one was empty too. Very confused and worried now, Sam half-ran down the hallway, looking to see if there was a nurse or janitor or anyone _anywhere, _but saw nothing.

Panic was starting to settle in when he heard Lucifer remark calmly behind him again. "I told you, you're the only one here."

Angrily, and with his tiredness overridden by worry, Sam rounded on him. "Alright, now what's going on?" he snapped. "Am I even awake? Or is this just another way for you to torment me in my sleep?"

Lucifer shrugged nonchalantly. "Maybe, but do you really want to take that risk, Sam? Now do as I say. You need to find a flashlight."

None of this was starting to make any more sense to Sam. "Why? It's not even dark."

"It will be," Lucifer answered, a sense of urgency in his tone, "And the way out of here isn't easy. Now check in one of the doctor's offices. There should be a flashlight and batteries in a desk drawer somewhere."

Unnerved, Sam flashed him a distrusting look, but decided it might be best to actually follow his advice for once. He didn't like this situation one bit, and it especially frustrated him that he couldn't tell whether any of this was real or not. And if it _was _real, then what happened to cause it?

He thought he ought to get to a phone and call Dean, and decided to follow Lucifer's instructions and head to the nearest office. Walking briskly, Sam rounded a corner to where he knew Dr. Manners' office to be, but as he did so stopped dead, his eyes falling on a huge dripping patch of blood spatter on the wall. A gasp of shock escaped him at the sight, and he felt a ripple of fear.

"Okay, tell me what's going on here?" he demanded of the imaginary angel, "What happened?"

There was no answer.

Turning round to look for the ever-present Lucifer, Sam's eyes fell on empty space. "What…?" he muttered to himself, taking a few steps back in the direction he came from and glancing round furiously, but there was no-one there. "Lucifer?" He couldn't believe he was actually calling out for the angel, but he needed someone to tell him what happened here. For weeks he'd been plagued by the hallucination of his tormentor in Hell refusing to leave him alone, but now at last that it was gone, oddly, relief was the last thing that Sam felt. Something very wrong was going on here, and Sam still thought he'd prefer to have the Devil in his head than have to face it completely alone.

He started to run down the corridor, wanting to reach the exits although he was disoriented as to where they were, but just as he came up on a corner he stopped suddenly, taking a few brisk paces back and breathing sharply. A chill ran down his spine as he heard the noise coming from round the corner; that of guttural, inhuman groan.


	2. Cracks

**A/N: Thank you very much to everybody who alert+ed this! I was very pleasantly surprised that this got any readers at all, given that it's pretty obscure. So here is the next chapter, and thank you for your patience with it.**

_**Chapter Two - Cracks**_

Momentarily, Sam froze. His weary muscles tensed up as he prepared himself to either fight or run. _There's something here. Something supernatural. _Well, of course there was. That was kind of his trademark. If he wasn't the one hunting down evil creatures, then they'd come to him.

What it was this time, he wasn't sure - that animalesque noise ruled out a lot of things, but none of the monsters in his memory matched what he'd just heard. Maybe it was something new then, but whatever it was, Sam didn't much want to have to fight it. He had no weapons, no knowledge of what he was fighting, and he was tired. So tired. The weeks spent fighting off hallucinations of the Devil every time he tried to sleep had taken their toll on him.

He was so exhausted that running and hiding really seemed like the most appealing option right now, but if this was some supernatural creature, he knew it was going to be down to him to do something about it. Getting a look at whatever it was might help with that.

Moving slowly, Sam crept towards the wall and began to inch along it, creeping closer to the corner where this corridor met the next. Just a quick glimpse round was all he was going for, and get a clearer of idea of what he was dealing with. It would do no good to try to fight, especially when the only thing he was armed with was his fists. A quick look, and then find a phone and call Dean: that was the plan. Assuming, of course, that all this was actually happening and wasn't just in his head.

Sam stopped as he reached the edge of the wall and took a breath before he tried to look round it. At the back of his mind, there was a nagging question of how some kind of creature had managed to make everyone in the hospital bar him vanish and how had Dean not already found out, but he forced that thought to the side as he tried to deal with the situation at hand. Sam's head inched slowly out past the corner as his eyes peered out in front of him and fell on...

...absolutely nothing.

It took him a few moments to be sure of that as he stared down the empty hallway, and then, still seeing nothing in the long corridor fully illuminated by the panel lights in the ceiling, he let out the breath he'd been holding. That didn't exactly put him at ease, but he stepped out into the middle of the hallway as he continued to look round with an uneasy frown on his face. He was sure he'd heard something growl, but literally only seconds had passed and there had been no footsteps or the sound of doors opening or closing. So where was it?

"Okay, this is getting weirder," Sam muttered to himself. The whole situation had a strange sense of unreality about it. Maybe it wasn't real? Perhaps he'd just imagined everything, including the noise. It didn't exactly seem unlikely, but there was definitely something very _wrong _ here. There was a blood spatter down the corridor and a ton of missing persons to remind him that the safest option would be to assume that this was actually happening. Whatever he did next, he was going to have to be cautious.

As Sam stood trying to figure out what was going on, another sound reached his ears. It sounded like running water, as if someone was taking a shower, and it was coming from somewhere down the corridor behind him. Even more confused and unnerved by the noise, he slowly turned round to look in its general direction. The hallway before him was bathed in an unnatural yellow glow from the strip lighting overhead, but was quite clearly empty.

_Dammit, I am going to get some answers, whatever it takes. _He hadn't abandoned his decision to approach things with caution, but this new development had furthered his frustration that he couldn't figure out what the hell was happening. The source of that noise was at least one thing he intended to find out.

Purposefully, Sam began to walk along the corridor, although his stride slowed a second later as he realised that trying to remain quiet might be a good idea. His hospital slippers didn't make much noise on the linoleum underfoot, but he still made a point of treading lightly to avoid attracting the attention of whatever may be out there.

Sam passed several closed doors until he finally homed in on the source of the sound, which appeared to be coming from behind the only door on the corridor that was stood slightly ajar. Of course that wasn't ominous at all.

It was slightly tempting to not open it and just go and resume his search for a phone, but he was here now, and if he chickened out Dean would never let him live it down. Tentatively, Sam approached the door and placed a hand upon the metal, pushing gently so that the narrow band of light shining through the crack expanded to reveal the whole room. The space beyond appeared to be a shower block - unsurprising given the nature of the noise - and at first glance seemed thankfully empty. However, an even deeper sense of unease began to eat away at Sam as his gaze fell upon the room. He was sure there hadn't been a shower block like this in this part of the ward before. Or maybe there was. His brain was so fried he couldn't really remember.

Sam took another step forward to enter the bathroom, feeling the cold from the ceramic floor beneath him seep through his slippers. Glancing about, the room seemed a lot grimier than he remembered the showers in this place being. Limescale was coating the pipework and mold was creeping up the walls and into the cracks of flaky yellow grout between the tiles. It seemed like this place hadn't been cleaned in months. Which was odd, Sam thought, although so was pretty much everything else about this situation.

As Sam walked further inside, the first few stalls he encountered were all dry; the shower heads encrusted with limescale and the water most definitely not running. It wasn't until he reached the final stall on the right that he found the source of the noise, but the sight he saw there made the hairs on the back of his neck stand on end.

The water streaming from the shower head was crimson in colour, forming a little whirlpool of red as it gathered on the floor below before reaching the drain. It wasn't flowing away fast enough to stop lines of what was clearly blood flooding the cracks in the ceramic underneath.

Sam grimaced at the sight. He was by no means squeamish, but the sheer volume of blood pouring down sickened him, and it was both horrifying and frightening to imagine where it was coming from. He almost wanted to go to the valve in the wall and just shut the flow off so he wouldn't have to watch it any longer, but there was no way to do that without becoming drenched in the bloodied water.

Sam had been staring at the macabre view for a mere two seconds before, for the third time that day, he heard a sudden sound from something he couldn't see. Except this time, its source was unmistakable. The door to the room had just slammed.


	3. Tight Spaces

**_Chapter 3 - Tight Spaces_**

Sam felt a sudden rush of panic as the sound echoed of the walls, the sinister noise an all too clear sign of danger. Heart racing, he abandoned the bleeding shower head and rushed to the door, feeling a sudden desire to just get the hell out of here. _Please don't be locked please don't be locked. _But as he reached the door and pulled at it desperately, it didn't budge. "Well, I don't know what I was expecting," he muttered, fear giving his words an edge of panic as he spoke to the empty room. Then, angry with himself for letting the situation get to him, he gave the door a futile kick. "Dammit!"

The impact hurt his toes through the insubstantial footwear he had on, but the pain gave the situation a stimulating air of realness that up until now had been lacking. Forcing himself to calm down, Sam tried to think. Now how did he get out? And what could it have been that had slammed the door and caused it to suddenly lock? Especially when the entire place seemed deserted and the door didn't even _have _a lock that Sam could see. It almost didn't seem physically possible, like there was no way this could be occurring except inside his head, yet the walls and door were now providing a very solid barrier to stop him escaping.

In the background, the bloody shower was still running.

Unable to take it any longer, Sam marched back to the stall with the intention of turning it off. He couldn't stop the red liquid soaking his feet as he stepped into it or the scarlet spray that drenched the front of his white scrubs, but he avoided it as best he could as he reached round to shut off the valve.

For a moment there was a calming quiet as the red water stopped running, but then a creaking noise sounded from somewhere in the pipes, and a second later Sam heard a rush of water again as another shower started up. _The plumbing in this place is seriously fucked _he thought as he went to see which one it was.

It turned out that it was the shower two stalls down on the opposite side of the room, and Sam was relieved to see the water was flowing blessedly clear. He crossed to it, and not caring much about how wet he got, tried to rinse as much of the blood away as possible. He needed to figure out a way to get out of here, but the hot water was helping clear his head as well as waking him up. Once he was as clean as he could get, he shut the shower off at the valve and readied himself to think of a plan.

However, it was barely two seconds before there was more creaking in the pipework and another shower started up, this time in the stall directly opposite. Sam glared at it. "You have got to be kidding me."

What was wrong with this place? Whatever it was, he didn't like it at all.

Sam considered just trying to ignore the rush of water and concentrating on finding a way out of here, but the constant noise was starting to grate on his sanity in a less intense but similar way to Lucifer's persistent torments over the past few months. With the hallucination seemingly having decided to leave him be, Sam wanted to be able to be able to think clearly again. He wanted silence, and maybe then he could finally concentrate and figure this whole crazy situation out.

He crossed over to the shower opposite and turned it off, not really caring how wet he was getting now since he had bigger things to worry about. As the by now familiar creaking sound resonated in the pipes he almost sighed wearily, but then there came a loud crashing noise from somewhere behind him that he hadn't been expecting.

Tensing up again, Sam spun round to see what it was. He calmed a little as he saw that there was still nothing there, but it appeared that an extraction vent in the far corner of the room had just fallen open with a loud metallic clang. For a couple of moments he stood staring up at it suspiciously, before hesitantly walking towards it to get a better look. That had been strange.

He hadn't even noticed there was a vent in this part of the room before, but he hadn't exactly been paying much attention, preoccupied as he was with the blood. Now though, it seemed to be offering him a solution to the question of how to get out of here. As Sam gazed up he couldn't see much beyond the dark hole that had opened up in the ceiling, but the vent seemed just large enough to accommodate him and there were pipes running up the wall he could climb up. At first glance it seemed to be a potential - and possibly only - means of escape, but what worried him was what he might find beyond.

That had almost seemed a little too convenient. It was as if the sequence of self-activating showers had been a puzzle for him to solve, and the reward was a way for him to get out of here. But this still felt like a trap, as if someone was toying with him, and Sam thought he knew who that might be. Everything pointed to this being an illusion created by Lucifer after all.

As he decided that, Sam clenched his jaw in anger at what was happening to him, and in frustration at himself for still being so uncertain. What was he meant to do if this _was _all just part of the Devil's game? What if finally things had gotten so bad he was in a coma and now he was living inside his nightmares? The thought terrified him, but he forced himself to stay calm. If none of this was real, then he could survive it. He couldn't die here. Everything here only existed in his head.

It wasn't convincing enough just to think it, so he clasped his hands together in front of him and dug his thumb sharply into his left palm, vainly trying to reignite pain in an old scar to drag himself back to reality. He hadn't really expected it to work, but there was still a faint spark of naive hope inside him that had believed it would be enough, and soon he'd be groggily awakening in his hospital bed and Dean would be right beside him. But as he found himself still stuck solidly inside the bathroom, acceptance gradually settled on him that it wouldn't be that easy. Well, now he thought he only had one real choice to get out of this. If this was Lucifer's game, then it would take more than this to defeat Sam Winchester. He was going to play it through to the end, and he was going to play to win. Then he was going to wake up, whether the Devil liked it or not.

With a renewed sense of purposeful determination, Sam stepped forward to grasp the pipes in the wall and haul himself up towards the vent. Fear was still very much present in his mind, but as his fingers curled over the edge of the gap he knew it was either face whatever may be up here or stay trapped down there. Slowly, he crawled inside, finding the space beyond a very tight fit for his large frame and leaving him little room to manoeuvre. In the cramped space it felt like there was barely enough room him to breathe, which only caused him to start breathing faster as he gulped down what little air there seemed to be.

Tilting his neck painfully to look up ahead and trying not to panic, Sam peered down the narrow passageway stretching before him, and was relieved to see some light streaming in from somewhere on the left a few metres away in the darkness. The sight gave him enough reassurance to help steady his breathing before he began his agonising journey along the ventilation shaft. His aching muscles wanted nothing more than to just give up and rest, but he forced himself onwards in painful, miniscule movements as he crawled through the narrow space. It seemed like an age before he reached the spot where the light was shining in, but eventually he did. Stopping and trying to hold himself still in a rather uncomfortable position, Sam twisted his head to look towards the source of the light. There was a branch off from the main passage extending a couple of metres or so, before terminating in a grill in the floor through which rays of light were shining up. Just before the vent opened into the room below, Sam could make out a long drop downwards that was pitch dark, and he had no way of determining how deep it was or what it led to. That was something he didn't much want to find out, but he did plan on somehow manoeuvring himself towards the grill and reaching the room underneath, desperate to get out of this claustrophobic space as soon as possible. The bottom of the shaft seemed to be lower on the other side of the drop than it was here, and Sam thought he'd probably have enough space to crouch and kick open the vent cover if only he could reach it.

Slowly and awkwardly, he tried to twist his body round to crawl in the direction of the light. Navigating the corner was painful. His hips got caught on the sharp edge several times, the metal painfully digging into his skin, and his shins didn't seem to want to fit as he tried to move them to orientate across the width of the passage. Throughout the ordeal he found himself wishing for once that he wasn't quite so tall or so broad, but at length it the worst of it was over, and he began to creep forward again. Upon reaching the part where the shaft went into a vertical decline, he realised how he actually was still grateful for his long arms as he reached across to pull himself over, managing to traverse the narrow aperture without slipping down it.

In the slightly taller space Sam was now crouching on top of the vent cover, and for a moment he worried that there would be something awful in the room below him and he would have to go back. However, as he looked down through the grill it simply appeared to be a patient bedroom, the metal cot below him still having its mattress in place unlike the one he'd seen earlier. There wasn't much else in the room he could make out from this angle, but he'd decided it was good enough that he would try and get down there, desperate to get out of this tight space.

He wasn't exactly sure what the best way to get the vent cover open would be, but the first thing he tried was to simply stamp on it as best he could when he didn't have much room to flex his knees. To his pleasant surprise, that coupled with his weight seemed to be enough. A moment later he was tumbling through the open space, the metal grill swinging open and Sam dropping downwards to fall onto the bed. The thin mattress still didn't make for the most comfortable landing, but the open space and bright light was welcome following his experience in the vent.

Scrambling to his feet again, Sam looked about him to confirm that this was indeed a patient bedroom. It was a little smaller than the one he'd been in, but the clinical white sheets on the bed and the basic metal furniture made its function clear. The metal door to the room was shut (and hopefully not locked) but before that there was a simple desk and chair on the left of the room beside the bed. A lone scrap of paper was lying upon it, and curious as to what it may be, Sam crossed to the desk to get a better look.

As he saw what was scrawled upon it, he felt his heart skip a beat.

The handwriting was one he recognised. Sharp, unfussy, and slightly forward slanting; with straight long tails on letters that were rendered a little uneven due to the writer seemingly rushing. It was written in what looked like black ballpoint, but there were a couple of worrying flecks or red on the paper. Sam knew the handwriting all too well from the times he'd seen it in messages left for him on motel notepaper, but what chilled him most was the words it spelled out:

"_I'm sorry Sammy"_

Sam's breath caught in his throat as he stared at it, before picking up the note with trembling hands. "Sorry for what, Dean?" he whispered, forgetting that this wasn't supposed to be real as fear gripped him. How was Dean involved in this? What had happened to him?

He was so caught up in staring fixedly at the note that he almost jumped out of his skin at what happened next.


	4. The Devil You Know

_**Chapter 4 – The Devil You Know  
**_

"Why didn't you try to find a goddamn flashlight, Sam?!"

At the sudden sound of the voice yelling in his right ear, Sam started, almost tripping over the chair by the desk in surprise. Recovering quickly, he shot a glare at the man-shaped fallen angel beside him as he realised that Lucifer had made a comeback.

The hallucination gave him a reproachful glare in return, and then his eyes turned upwards and he raised his hands in mock apology. "Sorry, dad, didn't mean to take your name in vain. Well, actually I did, but Sammy…" He then turned his gaze back to Sam and looked at him in annoyance. "Why didn't you do what I told you to?" He looked weirdly like a pissed off parent scolding their child.

Sam didn't answer him. "Glad you've showed up again," he snarled sarcastically, "I was lost without you constantly yelling in my ear."

Lucifer huffed. "Well if you'd done what I told you instead of just running off wherever you felt like, maybe you would have avoided that unpleasant little trip through the ceiling. If I have to yell to get it through your thick skull then I will: I'm trying to help you. Do what I tell you and you might just make it out of this."

"Yeah?" Sam challenged, suddenly brandishing the note at him. "Then what's this? What have you done to Dean? What are you trying to make me _think _you've done to Dean?"

Lucifer just shrugged. "I don't know. You're brother's not got anything to do with me."

"Quit pretending you aren't the one who's doing all this Lucifer, and just tell me what your game is." Sam had advanced closer to the angel and was towering over him, his tone angry as he tried to demand answers, but Lucifer just stared coolly back. Trying to intimidate the source of all evil on Earth who was only just an illusion in the first place was the most pointless thing Sam could have attempted.

"This has got nothing to do with me, Sam," he replied, sounding quite bored. "There's something else at work here, and I actually quite want you to survive it. It wouldn't be much fun if something else tried to take you away, so your choices are to listen to me, or face up to something worse on your own. Now which is it gonna be?"

_It's a trick, _Sam kept telling himself. _He's lying. _But it was hard to believe that with any certainty when he had so much to lose. Now Dean was involved (possibly, at least) and if Sam didn't try and doing something about all this then his brother was at risk too. Why or how the Devil was helping him, Sam didn't know, but nor did he think he could handle this on his own. Not in his current state.

Sam shook his head as he tried to think. "Then what's going on? How do you know what it is if it's got nothing to do with you?"

"Your subconscious has figured it out," came the casual reply, "And I'm just your subconscious finding a way of expressing it to you, if you wanna believe that. So you'd better listen to me when I tell you _you need to find a flashlight._"

This still didn't make sense, but Sam decided to hedge his bets and play along. "Alright, fine," he agreed, "Where? And what am I gonna use it for when all the lights are still on?"

"That won't last," the angel replied darkly. "The power's gonna go soon. Why don't you try the desk drawer?"

He said the last sentence in a much brighter tone before stepping out of the way to let Sam reach the drawers, and Sam looked at him a little uncertainly before following his advice and opening the top one in the desk. It was almost empty except for, as predicted, a single flashlight, and next to it a couple of batteries rolled along the bottom of the drawer as Sam pulled it open. Before picking the items up he cast a glance at Lucifer, who was giving him an 'I told you so' look.

"Yeah okay, fine," Sam conceded reluctantly, checking that the flashlight was working before slipping the spare batteries into the still damp pockets of his trousers, along with the slightly scrunched up note. He was about to shut the drawer again when he noticed there was another item hidden away at the back, and he reached in to pick it up and examine it. It was a small steel key, the right size for any ordinary sized door, and had no label to indicate what it was meant to open. "What's this for then?" he asked Lucifer.

The only response he got was a shrug. "I don't know. You might want to hold onto it though. It could be useful."

Sam glared at him, wondering how the angel could somehow know exactly where to find the flashlight, but was being determinedly unhelpful when it came to explaining what the key was for. Not granting him a response, Sam slipped the key into his pocket too, agreeing that it probably would be useful later on.

He was about to try exiting the bedroom now, continuing his search for a way out of the strangely empty hospital, but just as he walked past the hallucination to try the door, Lucifer had something else to add. "Don't worry about drying out, Sam. There's going to be more water later on, and you won't like what's in it."

That sounded cryptically ominous, and Sam was about to express his annoyance at how vague and unhelpful the Devil was being, but as he glanced back round to tell Lucifer to either explain what he was talking about or just stop talking, it seemed that the illusion had vanished again. Sam wasn't sure if he was pleased about that or not.

He turned his attention back to the door and tried the handle, but it stiffly refused to move, not turning enough to get the door open. Sam was almost about to start panicking at being trapped in a locked room again, but then he remembered he had the key. He supposed it would make sense that it was for this room. He fished in his pocket for the metal device and then tried it in the door, relieved to find that it turned easily with a click. That appeared to have worked then. Although he'd already found its use, Sam then took the key from the lock and pocketed it again, considering the possibility that it would be a universal key for many of the doors in the hospital. If that was the case, he would almost definitely be needing it later.

Sam then re-tried the handle, this time relieved to find that it opened smoothly, and pushed the door cautiously open, wondering what would be on the other side. As the door swung open, it was revealed that beyond it there a hospital corridor, as Sam had expected, but he hadn't anticipated it being almost pitch black. The only light allowing him to identify the hall was that streaming in from the room behind him. "Okay then…" Sam muttered softly to himself, feeling fear begin to creep up his spine again. He wasn't afraid of the dark, but this was most definitely unnerving. It seemed that Lucifer had been right about him needing the flashlight.

Raising the flashlight in question and gripping it in his left hand, Sam switched it on and then shone the beam out into the darkness in front of him. It cast a small, dim circle of light into the darkest spaces of the hall, but it was better than nothing. Armed only with his faint light source, Sam cautiously took a step beyond the threshold of the door.

The moment that his foot hit the floor on the other side, a strange sensation came over him. It was almost as if he was weightless, feet glued to the ground while the rest of his body tried to rise up, and there was a whistling sound ringing in his ears. Panic quickly washed over him, and a moment later, his already darkened field of vision cut to absolute pitch black.


	5. Interlude I

_**Interlude I**_

_Air rushing past… It's blowing upwards at high speed, it seems, but he's going down…_

_Down…_

_Adam is beside him, falling in sync with him as they plummet. There's a faint circle of light above them, shrinking further the deeper they go._

_Dean's up there, he knows. Each inch he falls further feels like another fracture in his heart as he realises he'll never see his brother again. But Dean will be safe. The world he's in will be safe, and he'll be happy in time. It's worth it, to end it like this. _

_He can still feel Lucifer inside of him. There's a strange, almost tangible sensation of the fallen angel's wings beating, trying to stop their fall, but he's weighed down by the flesh and blood of his human vessel._

_The light above has gone now; the ground closed, and the four beings have been swallowed up. He can feel the heat rising: the scorch of Hellfire hotter than anything burning at the core of the Earth as they descend towards it. It's unbearable, agonizing, impossible to live through…but he's already dead._

_Darkness and pain engulf him. Chains of invisible, relentless fire wind their way around his soul as he falls into the Cage, and the opening slams shut with a silent yet deafening finality. He feels the shockwave as he hits the bottom. His mouth opens to unleash a scream, and…_


	6. Crossing Doorways

_**Chapter Five – Crossing Doorways**_

Sam gasped, feeling as though he were breaking though the surface of an ocean as the world snapped back into focus. _What was that? _He shook his head to clear it of the unwelcome flashback that had felt so vivid it was as though he was reliving it. It was as if stepping out into the corridor had been some kind of trigger, like passing through the physical doorway had opened up a door in his mind. Now he didn't know what else might come through, and whatever it might be, he wasn't sure he could hold it back. _Dammit, _he thought to himself, angry that his own mind wouldn't do what he told it to. He couldn't let this place erode his sanity any more than it already had. If there was one thing he had to remain in control of, it was his own thoughts, and he couldn't let other things force their way in. _Focus, _he told himself as he took a few deep, steady breaths. _Stay in the present, and find a way out._

With the flashlight raised, and the beam shaking just slightly more than it had been a moment ago, Sam stepped fully out into the corridor and continued on. His footsteps were just a faint shuffle, but it still sounded unnaturally loud in the quiet. The endless darkness and maze of identical corridors surrounding him were enough to chip away at the forced calm he had imposed on himself, but even as he felt his sense of fear and panic growing he progressed onwards. The flashlight beam fell on nothing but linoleum floors and plain white walls as he made his way through the ward, trying hard to remember where anything was and avoid accidentally going back on himself, but the longer it went on the more he became certain he wasn't even in the same ward anymore. Whatever this place was, he was sure it wasn't the hospital Dean had brought him to. It seemed like a rough copy, that lacked the kind of physical limitations or logical consistency of the real world he knew. It seemed to change around him, as if each corridor blinked out of existence and reconfigured itself somewhere else after he'd passed it, the hallways continuing on forever with no actual way out. It could be that this place existed on some alternate dimension created by some monster or demon wanting to toy with him. Or maybe it was all just a construct of his mind.

Just as Sam began to think the constant repetition of this place was unbearable and he despaired to think he may never find a way out, he rounded a corner to see a yellow rectangle of light up ahead of him. Relief washed over him as he saw that there was a room where the door was open and the power was still working, and lowering the flashlight he hurried more quickly towards it. He was halfway along the hallway when suddenly a chair appeared in view from the right of the doorway and flew across the room to hit the floor on the other side with a crash. Sam froze, his breath catching in his throat. _So there is something here. _

He tentatively wondered if he should back away from the light and go in a different direction, but he was hesitant to move at all. Standing stone still, he listened, waiting to see if he could hear anything else from within the room or if something would appear in the doorway, but there was no further sound or movement. It was almost as if nothing was there, but chairs didn't just fling themselves across a room of their own accord. _So, what? It's a poltergeist then? _That answer seemed much too simple for a world that didn't seem to make sense at all. After several seconds of standing waiting, he knew he was just going to have to press ahead anyway. If this was the only room with the lights still on, chances were this was the way he'd have to go.

He closed the rest of the distance to the doorway, pausing before finally stepping over it. He found himself wishing he had a weapon of some sort, but he was just going to have to do with nothing better than the flashlight as he peered inside to check there was nothing there. It came as a slight relief to see that there didn't appear to be anything in the room aside from furniture, although it added to his sense of unease.

The room appeared to be a storage space of some sort, filled with rows of filing cabinets and cupboards as well as chairs stacked on top of each other up against one wall. In one corner, a lone, old-fashioned computer sat on a desk, the chunky monitor projecting a forlorn bluescreen to the room. Sam crossed to it, hoping maybe he could get it working and find some information, but a quick glance at the smashed tower under the desk told him the hard drive was wrecked. Sighing, Sam quickly abandoned that idea, but there was a shelf above the desk filled with black binders and he instead went to pick one up, hoping that the contents might be able to tell him something. As he did so, a loose sheet of paper fluttered down from between the pages to land on the grubby keyboard below. Curious, he set the binder back down again and went to look at that instead. The top and left edges were smooth, but the coarse tears along the right and bottom of the paper clearly showed it had been ripped from something. As he saw what was written on it, he yet again felt a wave of fear as he realised that it was another note in Dean's handwriting:

"_I tried to stop all this happening and find a way to save you, but I guess I just wasn't good enough. There's got to be a way for me to make this right."_

Sam licked his dry lips. "What happened, Dean? What do you mean?" he muttered, feeling a combination of worry for his brother and frustration over not knowing what was going on. How even was it that Dean could be leaving notes for him here, scattered all over the place? Any possible answer to that was cause for worry. Hoping it might be able to tell him more, Sam flipped the note over to read what was on the other side. It appeared to be part of torn up patient record and his eyes scanned the incomplete text: "_John Doe admitted 02/13/11 at 0234h_…_patient suffered severe blood loss…after four days has yet to regain consciousness…" _From what he could make out it was just a generic piece of hospital documentation that Dean had found to write on, however that was possible. There didn't seem to be anything that helped explain his situation, but Sam folded the note anyway and shoved it into his pocket alongside the other one.

There were no doors in the storeroom that appeared to lead anywhere else, and with a sense of despair Sam realised he was going to have to go back the way he came. Going back out into the dark corridors wasn't exactly a pleasant thought, so he decided to make the most of having found the only lit room in the entire hospital and started to look around. There was a hook on one wall with a white coat like the kind doctors wore draped over it, and on the floor below it was a gray messenger bag. Sam glanced at those briefly before turning his attention to the rows of cupboards, and he tried the one nearest to him to find it was locked. He grunted in disappointment and then tried the one next to it, which opened only to reveal it was completely empty. That prompted a puzzled scowl. What was the point in a storage room if it wasn't going to be used to store anything? Although he wasn't sure why he was still trying to apply logic to this place.

The next cupboard along was the one that the mysterious flying chair had fallen in front of, and Sam kicked that out of the way to get to the door. It fortunately opened, and this time the cupboard itself was stocked full of contents: there were bottles of pills in assorted colors; disposable syringes labelled as shots of morphine and epinephrine; and more mundane items such as stationery, boxes of batteries and lightbulbs.

He was just surveying the items when he heard a voice by his ear again. "What have you found here, Sammy?"

No matter how many times that happened, Sam thought it would probably always make him jump. He started slightly before turning to glower at Lucifer. "Stuff that I'm pretty sure most hospitals have. Now what have you come to tell me?"

"That stuff looks pretty useful; you might want to take it with you."

_That was an oddly helpful suggestion, _Sam thought, which only made him suspicious. "Why? Want do you think is gonna happen?"

"I don't know, but you should always be prepared, Sam. Didn't your daddy ever teach you that?"

Sam shot him a glare at that remark, but it was actually sound advice. Not that he'd needed Lucifer to tell him. He went to pick up the messenger bag from the floor, knowing his pockets couldn't accommodate everything he needed, and slung it over his shoulder before beginning to empty some of the cupboard's contents into it. He stocked up on the packs of band-aids and epinephrine shots, hoping that was a precaution that would prove unnecessary, and then packed a few spare batteries for the flashlight.

"And the lightbulbs, Sam," Lucifer decided to add.

That earned him one of Sam's infamous bitchfaces. "Lightbulbs? Seriously? You keep telling me the power's going to go out and now you expect I'm gonna go round changing lightbulbs?"

"Just be a good little boy and pack them," the hallucination bitched back impatiently, "And the pills. They'll be more useful than you think."

"I don't even know what most of them are for."

"You don't know what most of them are for _yet. _You see those little orange ones at the front?" – he gestured to one of the pill bottles in front of Sam – "They're caffeine pills. You might be glad of those."

Sam scowled, but he did what he was told anyway, agreeing that the caffeine stimulants would be something he'd be grateful for if he wanted to stay awake long enough to get through this. Before dumping the bottle in the bag, he screwed the cap off and dry swallowed one, hoping it would help fight back the sense of tiredness that had already settled on him.

The final thing he collected from the cupboard was another key, a little larger than the one he already had, from a hook at the back of one of the shelves. "What do you think that's for?" Lucifer asked tauntingly in his ear.

Irritated, Sam deadpanned the reply. "I imagine it's the hall key," he said, holding up the label that was attached to it, which he knew full well the angel was aware of.

Lucifer gave a mocking laugh. "See, Sam? Just use your brain and I'm sure you'll get through this."

With everything of potential use salvaged from that cupboard, Sam swung the door shut and proceeded to the next one, wondering if perhaps there might be another key. The handle turned with a click, and then as the door swung open Sam found himself suddenly stumbling backwards as a heavy, human-shaped mass came tumbling out of the cupboard. The smell of it reached his nose in time for him to recognise it and leap out of the way, before the body fell to the floor. A curse escaped him and he backed away in shock, putting a hand to his mouth while Lucifer stood passively by. If anything, the Devil looked amused. "Well, that wasn't quite so nice as what was in the last one."

Sam shot him a disapproving glare, although he wasn't sure what he had expected. He took a few breaths to calm himself down, still shocked at having found a corpse stuffed into one of the cupboards. It wasn't as though he'd never seen a dead body before, although this one showing up now had really hammered home the seriousness of the situation. There was something very bad and very dangerous going on here, and the sooner he found a way out the better.

As Sam glanced down at the body he was relieved it wasn't someone he recognised, but he could see that it was a man who looked to be in his early forties with fair hair and was wearing a white lab coat. The corpse appeared to be pretty fresh, and the obvious cause of death was several deep gashes running across the man's back, staining his pristine white coat crimson. Slightly sickened, Sam glanced up at the hallucination standing beside him. "Ok, what did that?"

"Are you sure you want to know, Sam?"

Sam wasn't so sure that he did. "Look, just…tell me how to get out of here," he demanded of the angel, hating everything about this situation more with each passing second.

Lucifer smirked. "You get out the same way you came in: through the door."

Sam gritted his teeth in annoyance. "Yeah, real helpful," he growled sarcastically, but turned back towards the door anyway. He was keen to leave this room and the body behind even if it meant going back into the dark, but as he suddenly spun round to face the open doorway he froze again. The lights beyond it were now switched back on. That itself might have been a good thing, except for two issues: what was it that had turned them on? And Sam was certain that the hallway he was now facing was not the one he'd entered by. There were only a few feet of tiled floor beyond the doorway before the corridor opened up into a bigger room, that appeared to be some kind of canteen or communal area judging by the several tables surrounded by plastic chairs that Sam could see from his current vantage point. The strange feeling he'd had earlier that this place was reconfiguring itself when he wasn't looking seemed to be confirmed.

Sam turned to glance over at Lucifer again in scared confusion.

"That isn't the way I came earlier."

"No, but it's the way you're going," the angel replied cryptically.

That was far from reassuring, but since that doorway was the only entrance and exit to the room, Sam knew he didn't have much choice. Cautiously, he stepped out into the hallway again and walked through to the canteen area. Once he'd reached it, he could now see the only way onwards from there: on the far left of the room was a wall of metal bars running from floor to ceiling, much like the kind found in prisons, with a smaller door that opened in the middle and was secured with a sliding bolt. Beyond the bars he could see a panel light in the ceiling that was intermittently flickering, illuminating the space below in brief bursts. Sam crossed to it to get a better look, and as he reached the bars he saw that the gate marked the entrance to a stairwell that descended downwards into pitch darkness. The bolt on the door was secured with a padlock, but it was the only possible exit to the room.

"So, I guess I have to find a way to get down there?" Sam muttered to the hallucination beside him.

"Not unless you have any better ideas."

Ignoring the tone of that remark, Sam stood for a moment and stared down into the blackness below, wondering what might be down there even if he should manage to reach it. His thoughts weren't exactly pleasant, but it wasn't long before they were interrupted by the sound of yet another strange, inhuman growl.

At once on edge, Sam spun around quickly, fists clenched and adrenaline pumping. He couldn't see anything in the immediate room that had caused the noise, but the sound seemed strangely to have come from somewhere beyond the storage room that he'd entered by.

"It's that same old question," Lucifer remarked beside him. "Is it real? Are you just imagining it? Is anything actually there?"

The noise sounded again, closer this time, and Sam wondered if the storage room had somehow yet again been replaced with another hallway. He remained motionless for a moment longer, still trying to work out where exactly the sound was coming from, but then Lucifer sauntered over to whisper in his ear. "Let me give you a clue, Sammy: this one's real."

The words chilled him, but it was enough to prompt him out of his motionless stupor. _Right, time to do something. _He looked about him, wondering if he could smash a chair or pull the leg off one to use as a weapon, but he heard Lucifer tutting at him.

"Weapons aren't going to do you any good, Sam. Have you seen the state you're in? Best thing you can do is run."

"Be quiet!" Sam hissed at him, thinking that he'd prefer to not attract the thing's attention at all even though arming himself provided some reassurance, but Lucifer just laughed.

"I'm a hallucination, Sam: it can't hear me. You, on the other hand, it can hear. And it can hurt, unless you just get out of here. Don't bother getting armed, don't bother trying to get a look at it: just run."

Running away really wasn't Sam's style: never had been, but he couldn't pretend this was a situation like any he'd ever been in before. Still, he was somewhat hesitant to take what he felt like what was the cowardly option and just flee. It took for the noise to sound again and Lucifer yelling at him once more before he finally decided to just go. _I'm coming back, _he promised himself, _and I'm going to get to the bottom of this. But I need to get out of here and find Dean first._

He was fumbling in the bag for the hall key, praying that it would work on the padlock, and was relieved when he finally managed to get it unlocked and dragged the door open with a screech of metal. He bolted through, slamming the gate shut behind him with a clang and snapping the padlock back into place. The growl sounded again, and this time he was certain he saw a shape in the corner of his eye entering the room, accompanied by the sound of metallic creaking and clanging to the slow rhythm of footsteps.

Part of him wanted to look: he was desperate to see what this monster was and know what he was facing, but even more so he was desperate for it to not see him. As he recalled the body in the storeroom, his imagination gave him enough to work with as to what this creature might be like. And with no shotguns, no pistols, no machetes, and no knowledge of what the hell was going on or barely any energy that wasn't coming from his last reserves of adrenaline or caffeine pills, Sam had never felt so vulnerable.

He was caught in his indecision to try and steal a glance back a moment longer, but then he heard Lucifer yell in his face one final time:

"Sam, _go!_"

And then he turned and fled down the stairs into the pitch blackness below.


End file.
